FlexSea

FlexSea develops alternatives to plastic packaging items using the power of seaweeds. The first material produced is a flexible, transparent home compostable film derived from red seaweed polysaccharides and food compatible additives. The film is a solution to plastic pollution in the environment. Today, the leader in plastic waste management is Europe and even there, the rates of recycling in plastics is 14%, and those numbers fall even further down for Single Use Plastics (SUP). On the global scale, we estimate this recycling rate to be below 7%. Today's bioplastics on the other hand, such as PLA, are derived from crops requiring arable land, pesticides, fertilizers, and fresh water. On top of that, they only degrade in industrial facilities and not in natural environment conditions. Other compostable polymers like PBS and PBAT are petroleum derived so despite their improved degradability, they still contribute to the use of fossil fuels. Plastic pollution, on top of aesthetic pollution, induces micro plastic pollution which is much more nefarious at every trophic scale of the food chain, including us humans.